Vivendo in Italia...

Buongiorno Tutti!

Well, it has been a good week! A nice start to the year of 2015! In case any of you are wondering, I am still living in Italy. Life in Italy is going well and I am enjoying it thoroughly! It is crazy, as time is ticking ever closer to me getting onto that plane I feel an increased push to work harder and harder. It is good. This week still being the holidays, it has been really hard to meet with anyone. Apparently the holiday season here ends on the 6th of January after some celebration about a witch named the Befana. Kind of strange, but cool all the same.

This week we were able to meet with A* and we unfortunately had to move her date back again because our Branch President wants her to come to Church 3 times in a row before her baptism. So, right now, it seems to be set for the 24th of January. I won't be here for her baptism or S*'s, but it will be cool just hearing about them and stuff after the fact. We were able to teach A* this week and we taught her about the atonement and being purified from our sins. It was a cool lesson and it went really well! She seems really ready to keep going and stuff and she understands and is ok with the date being moved back and stuff. She knows that she needs to be ready for baptism and be ready to make this her new life. It is good. I think that she and S* will be very good new converts for the Church here in Gela! This week while doing finding on the street we were able to get a pretty good amount of numbers on the street but all of them told us to contact them after the holidays haha, so we will be doing that later this week. Hopefully we will get a new investigator out of it. It would be awesome!

Yesterday in church we had A* come again with her husband and their daughter. The husband doesn't seem very interested, but we will see if he takes the lessons in time. It would be pretty cool to see them all get baptized in the future! A family in the church! That would help Gela a ton!

Well, it is crazy, time is flying too fast. I don't even know what to think. The closer the end comes the more I already am starting to miss Italy. It is strange. It is going to be sad. I am trying to live it up as much as I can while I am here.

This week I made a new year's resolution to read a little bit of the Book of Mormon every day and so far it has been going really well. As I have actively been reading from it every day I have felt really happy and it has been such a blessing to every day. I am grateful for that book, it is incredible and I love it so much! It offers help in so many ways and you can't even explain how it does it, it just does it. I have felt closer to the Spirit as I set aside time to study from it. It is one of the things pushing me and helping me finish strong. When you get tired you start to see where the real sources of energy are and you see what is actually strengthening you. It is funny because a lot of times we think that we are pushing ahead so well on our own and that we are making such great progress, when we get tired and wonder how we can go on and finish we realize that it isn't really our strength that we are using to finish, it is something much greater with a lot more power behind it. I am grateful for the help I am being given to finish strong here in Italy. It is great!

On new years eve I had the wonderful opportunity of going out to some small Sicilian towns to find some less actives with Anziano Stephens from Ragusa. It was incredible driving through the countryside here and seeing all of the little towns and stuff. That was a great experience and we were able to find of some the Ragusa less actives. That was one of the highlights of my week. Modica is a beautiful city!!! We stayed the night new years eve in Ragusa and then went back to Gela the next morning. I like Sicilia, it is a cool place!

Well, next week will probably be my last email at least from Italy. I will probably send one from New York when I am with Sam, so that will be pretty cool! I hope all is well at home! I love you all!

Sincerely,

Anziano Burton